We have review copies! If you are a sports reporter, book reviewer or blogger and would like to review Rules of the Game: The Best Sports Writing from Harper’s Magazine, email your request to me at kathy@harpers.org. Help us help you help us! Click for high-res photo

We have review copies!

If you are a sports reporter, book reviewer or blogger and would like to review Rules of the Game: The Best Sports Writing from Harper’s Magazine, email your request to me at kathy@harpers.org.

Help us help you help us!

Hm, only one more copy of Rules of the Game in stock on Amazon?  No worries.  You can order from the Harper’s Bookshelf. Click for high-res photo

Hm, only one more copy of Rules of the Game in stock on Amazon?  No worries.  You can order from the Harper’s Bookshelf.

Deadspin featured Rules of the Game: The Best Sports Writing from Harper’s Magazine on its site yesterday, posting an excerpt of Gary Cartwright’s “Confessions of a Washed-Up Sportswriter.”  Cartwright’s article, which has been made available online at Harpers.org, is one of the more 30 stories in Rules of the Game.

Deadspin featured Rules of the Game: The Best Sports Writing from Harper’s Magazine on its site yesterday, posting an excerpt of Gary Cartwright’s “Confessions of a Washed-Up Sportswriter.”  Cartwright’s article, which has been made available online at Harpers.org, is one of the more 30 stories in Rules of the Game.

Anyone who’s into baseball history will find Glory Days, an online exhibition from the Museum of the City of New York, worth checking out.  We learned about this little gem from Nick Schonberger at Selectism.

Anyone who’s into baseball history will find Glory Days, an online exhibition from the Museum of the City of New York, worth checking out.  We learned about this little gem from Nick Schonberger at Selectism.

Deadspin is having a giveaway of Rules of The Game: The Best Sports Writing from Harper’s Magazine.  Their favorite Spring Break story submissions will get a book.  Here’s the post, where you can learn how to enter.

Deadspin is having a giveaway of Rules of The Game: The Best Sports Writing from Harper’s Magazine.  Their favorite Spring Break story submissions will get a book.  Here’s the post, where you can learn how to enter.

The website for Rules of the Game: The Best Sports Writing from Harper’s Magazine is live! Thanks to Christopher Swift of TwentyOne Ten Design, who designed and built a beautiful site for us. Click for high-res photo

The website for Rules of the Game: The Best Sports Writing from Harper’s Magazine is live!

Thanks to Christopher Swift of TwentyOne Ten Design, who designed and built a beautiful site for us.

The Library Journal’s verdict on Rules of the Game

Stevenson, Matthew & Michael Martin. Rules of the Game: The Best Sports Writing from Harper’s Magazine. Franklin Square: Harper’s Magazine. Apr. 2010. c.368p. ISBN 978-1-879957-58-9. pap. $14.95. SPORTS

This collection of great writings by Mark Twain, George Plimpton, and A. Bartlett Giamatti, to name but three, is the ideal addition to any library’s general collection on Americana, sports, social studies, and, not least of all, baseball. If one knew nothing about this country, its history, and mores, one would be almost qualified for citizenship once these wonderful texts have been read, savored, and reread. From the emergence of the Davis Cup and musings (in 1938) about the future hold of television on sports and our lives to the assault on racism in sport and society, not to mention the grip of a sports team on small-town life, this collection is superior in every aspect. On baseball, we move from the bleachers of Wrigley to the role of a sports hero in overcoming bereavement to Branch Rickey and Bernie Carbo.VERDICT This is sheer reading pleasure of a rare quality. Highly recommended for all sports fans.—Gilles Renaud, Cornwall, Ont.

The review appeared online here on March 1, 2010.

“
In all these situations, and hundreds of others, a man either comes through or he doesn’t. He is alone out there, naked but for his ability, which counts for everything. Something there is elemental about this, and something greatly satisfying.
Joseph Epstein in “Obsessed with Sport.”